4 ms·

We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones. Linux may be a better platform than AOSP. Android and iOS were designed for co

We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones. Linux may be a better platform than AOSP. Android and iOS were designed for control first. Control over apps, control over the store, over what users are allowed to do. If you don't need any of that to make money why not run a regular Linux distro. Opens source phones will never be mainstream. Same as desktop Linux. But it would be nice to have a widely supported option for those of us that care

guerrilla 6y ago
It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine [2]. Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3]. [1]. https://puri.sm/products/ https://puri.sm/products/ [2]. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_pho...
- cesarb 6y ago
  > > We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones. > It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine [2]. Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3]. But are they standardized? That is, can I have a single "phone OS" distribution which can be installed unmodified in all of them? We're already there with the Raspberry Pi: the 64-bit Fedora I installed on mine boots through UEFI, and the same Fedora install should boot on any other UEFI-using 64-bit ARM board. That's the only way to get the necessary scale; otherwise, the community will stay split in separate silos (a purism silo, a pine64 silo, etc).
  - okennedy 6y ago
    The Librem 5's PureOS is very nearly stock Debian and the Purism devs have been very diligent about getting their stuff upstreamed into mainline Linux and Debian. Pine doesn't employ software developers, but the Manjaro and Mobian communities are also doing their best to stay as close to stock desktop distributions as possible. A key difference between the Pi and both the Librem 5 and Pinephone is that the latter two made an explicit design choice to use stock-standard (nearly) blob-free hardware. Unlike Raspbian, which relies on a custom kernel, PureOS, Mobian, Manjaro, etc... are very nearly standard desktop operating systems, with relatively minor tweaks to system defaults. Heck, PureOS and Manjaro are desktop operating systems just running on the phone with mobile-oriented shell . There was a nice, related post on this from Purism a few days ago: https://puri.sm/posts/investing-in-real-convergence/ https://puri.sm/posts/investing-in-real-convergence/
    - input_sh 6y ago
      Worth noting that Purism's ex-CTO seems rather pissed about the company: https://twitter.com/zlatandebian/status/1287317134423535622 https://twitter.com/zlatandebian/status/1287317134423535622
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Those are just the next ones on a long list started with Openmoko.
burtonator 6y ago
HN loves to talk about how Open Source and distributed system are going to change the world. Apache and Linux were open source. The Internet was designed to be distributed. We failed. We still had centralization. We still have SPoF... The issue is economic, not technical. When corporations like Amazon and Google have severely unfair competitive advantages we're going up in this situation again and again and again. The only way to change this is to reform tax law.
- kazagistar 6y ago
  And the only way to reform tax law is to reform speech law to prevent blatant corruption.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Yes, I agree. But it's far easier to push technology----where incremental progress like Pine64-ing everything you own is possible----than push for political stuff when e.g. FTFP means you'd have to move first. I, for one, see technological replicating the stagnation and over-complexity of human systems (say US was kinda alright in 1790, Unix in 1970). I Hope that if the technological and organizational problems of free software/hardware can be solved, we can use that experience to tackle the real-life problems.
- jameslk 6y ago
  > The only way to change this is to reform tax law. I'm curious what kind of tax reform you have in mind?
userbinator 6y ago
open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones I don't think an ecosystem based around SoCs from a notoriously proprietary and open-source-unfriendly company is at all a good model of an "open source phone".

guerrilla 6y ago

It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine [2]. Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3]. [1]. https://puri.sm/products/ https://puri.sm/products/ [2]. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ [3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_phones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_pho...

cesarb 6y ago
> > We desperately need a standardized open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones. > It seems like we're getting there with Prism [1] and Pine [2]. Seems to be a couple more I've never heard of [3]. But are they standardized? That is, can I have a single "phone OS" distribution which can be installed unmodified in all of them? We're already there with the Raspberry Pi: the 64-bit Fedora I installed on mine boots through UEFI, and the same Fedora install should boot on any other UEFI-using 64-bit ARM board. That's the only way to get the necessary scale; otherwise, the community will stay split in separate silos (a purism silo, a pine64 silo, etc).
- okennedy 6y ago
  The Librem 5's PureOS is very nearly stock Debian and the Purism devs have been very diligent about getting their stuff upstreamed into mainline Linux and Debian. Pine doesn't employ software developers, but the Manjaro and Mobian communities are also doing their best to stay as close to stock desktop distributions as possible. A key difference between the Pi and both the Librem 5 and Pinephone is that the latter two made an explicit design choice to use stock-standard (nearly) blob-free hardware. Unlike Raspbian, which relies on a custom kernel, PureOS, Mobian, Manjaro, etc... are very nearly standard desktop operating systems, with relatively minor tweaks to system defaults. Heck, PureOS and Manjaro are desktop operating systems just running on the phone with mobile-oriented shell . There was a nice, related post on this from Purism a few days ago: https://puri.sm/posts/investing-in-real-convergence/ https://puri.sm/posts/investing-in-real-convergence/
  - input_sh 6y ago
    Worth noting that Purism's ex-CTO seems rather pissed about the company: https://twitter.com/zlatandebian/status/1287317134423535622 https://twitter.com/zlatandebian/status/1287317134423535622
pjmlp 6y ago
Those are just the next ones on a long list started with Openmoko.

burtonator 6y ago

HN loves to talk about how Open Source and distributed system are going to change the world. Apache and Linux were open source. The Internet was designed to be distributed. We failed. We still had centralization. We still have SPoF... The issue is economic, not technical. When corporations like Amazon and Google have severely unfair competitive advantages we're going up in this situation again and again and again. The only way to change this is to reform tax law.

kazagistar 6y ago
And the only way to reform tax law is to reform speech law to prevent blatant corruption.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Yes, I agree. But it's far easier to push technology----where incremental progress like Pine64-ing everything you own is possible----than push for political stuff when e.g. FTFP means you'd have to move first. I, for one, see technological replicating the stagnation and over-complexity of human systems (say US was kinda alright in 1790, Unix in 1970). I Hope that if the technological and organizational problems of free software/hardware can be solved, we can use that experience to tackle the real-life problems.
jameslk 6y ago
> The only way to change this is to reform tax law. I'm curious what kind of tax reform you have in mind?

userbinator 6y ago

open source phone. The raspberry pi of phones I don't think an ecosystem based around SoCs from a notoriously proprietary and open-source-unfriendly company is at all a good model of an "open source phone".